stop pretending. only flood insurance covers floods. ♪ visit floodsmart.gov/pretend to learn your risk. good morning for what is normally "rock center." it surnd out to be a remarkable evening. the suspect in boston, the younger of the two brother was apprehend add live. he's being treated at the hospital. but what a terrible toll these

two brothers, these two suspects, one of them now dead, what a terrible toll they leave behind. it all ended tonight with a wimper. inside a boat in a trailer in a backyard in watertown, massachusetts, and then it ended with a genuine cheer. all those first responders, cops, firemen as they exited town, the town that was terrorized by a gun battle in the streets last night, they were all cheered and they had a chance to shine, bask in the glow of joyful citizens who were just thankful they came in. they rode in to save the day. kate snow was there amid all of it tonight. and she is joining us tonight to start it all off. kate, good evening. >> good evening to you, brian. let's remember what this week has been like, a week that seemed like it would never end in boston. on monday, of course, you had the devastating bombings at the

marathon. a couple days later, last night the fbi holds a press conference showing video and pictures of two key suspects and asking the public for help. the first sign of major development came 10:00 p.m. eastern time thursday. about five hours after the fbi news conference. individual yes showed one of the suspects at a convenience store. a special task force done berelli. >> at the end of the evening, we were confident we would have some success. never dreamed it would unfold in the manner in which it did. >> reporter: a short time later at approximately 10:20 p.m., there was a report of gunfire at the nearby massachusetts institute of technology, m.i.t. at 10:30 p.m., an m.i.t. campus police officer was found shot to death in his vehicle. he was later identified as 26

sean collier. and it wasn't over. now an armed carjacking of a black mercedes suv. the driver held hostage at gun point for half an hour. the gunman would take that mercedes suv would take that on a willed to deadly ride fr cambridge to watertown, massachusetts. the suspects shot at police and threw exploding devices from a speeding car. a police officer was seriously wounded. in watertown around midnight, this couple found themselves in the center of the storm. >> there are with 30 cups on foot running towards us on the opposite side. get back. what are you doing? get away. it was surreal. it felt like a movie. >> reporter: as 200 roun were fired, this resident called 911. >> i sherd explosion after explosion. i crouched down in the doorway

and i saw the bullet come from here to there. it was so loud. >> reporter: shortly after 1:00 a.m. eastern time, a reporter was caught in the crossfire nearby. >> we're all taking cover behind the different news vehicles, even the police are taking cover behind their cars. >> these are bullet holes inside a local home. they were still on lockdown because they were still on lockdown. >> we were crawling through the hallway, we saw a big flash out front. there was like an explosion with glass. >> another resident described what he was seeing using skype. >> i walk in here and -- it is angled at the bomb squad. >> michael dushette saw what happened next. >> the guy out front shooting it out with the cops. and i see an officer and him are about 30 feet apart shooting at

each other. craziest stuff i've ever seen. >> this man, the suspect in the black hat got out of the mercedes suv and was strapped with explosives. during the shootout he was hit by police fire and later pronounced dead at a hospital. >> the other suspect, that man in the white cap, floored the accelerator of the suv to get away running over the man who we later learned were his own brother. >> the cops jumped out of the way before he ran over the brother and dragged him up the street. >> all public transportation shut down. at 6:30 a.m., amtrak suspended train service in and out of boston. as morning arrived, the world learned -- >> authorities say the two are brothers. >> reporter: the dead brother was tamerlan tsarnaev, 26-year-old. the brother on the run, dzhokhar tsarnaev.

>> we had a term for these. they are called bomb chuckers. we have a real life no kidding bomb chucker on the loose. >> reporter: in and around boston, every day life ground to a halt. police departments made emergency calls to residents. >> stay indoors until further instructions. >> reporter: this is what watertown, massachusetts neighborhoods look like. police on the street. helicopters overhead. nearly a million people have been simply told to stay indoors. after an anxiety filled week, it's a day like nothing boston has ever experienced. kerry sanders juan on tv when the police told them to take cover. >> the officer said get down. >> reporter: the uncle pleaded with the brother. >> if you're alive, turnier self in and ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured. >> reporter: just as dusk was

falling tonight, another break in the manhunt and for the second night in a row, a suburban boston neighborhood was on pins and needles, jarred by something that sure sounded like gunfi gunfire. after 24 hours of firing, police seemed to have the main us is sick cornered. a resident in watertown called to report blood in a backyard leading to a boat where police believed the suspect was hiding. as an ambulance left the area around 9:00 p.m. tonight eastern time. >> the suspect is in custody. >> the crowd cheered. in the end, it all came down to ordinary citizens rallying to help the authorities. back to you. >> on the up side, while there were rumors and fits and starts, this was a kind of rollout experiment for a crowd sourced

manhunt spread via media and more importantly social media. >> reporter: yeah, that's right. the minute they put those pictures and video out last night it just took off, brian. people started calling. people giving tips. they flooded local authorities. and that is probably part -- certainly part of what led to the downfall of the second suspect here tonight. >> kate snow starting off our coverage tonight. kate, thanks. and our chief foreign affairs correspondent, chief foreign correspondent richard engel with us here in the studio tonight. there's a lot of ground to cover. but you find meaning in the most interesting things that we have witnessed tonight. and that is from the applause that came at the end of the night to the people who saved the day, to the fact that this suspect is alive. why those two things? >> i thought those were the two things that struck me about what we saw today. first, that he's alive. because now he can be debriefed and we can answer all of these questions that counterterrorism officials have been asking themselves and looking into all day.

were these just two brothers who decided to motivate themselves, who according to their internet trail were looking at jihadi websites about pakistan and about chechnya and decided to do something for the cause and put some bombs, or were they actually in contact with groups outside the country? he's alive, so we can know that. we can find out if there's other organizations out there that are affiliated with them. were they planning other attacks, or did they settle their bombs out? that's very, very important. the second thing is the applause. and it's not just a feel-good moment. this has national security implications. all day in terrorist chat rooms where, by the way, they were celebrating this like you have no idea, these al qaeda forums, they were saying this is a great idea. they were inviting other sort of lone wolves or wannabes to do the same kind of thing.

and all day they were saying that the people of boston are terrorized, look at them cowering in their homes. and then instead we saw the people of boston come out onto the streets and thank the police officers, embrace themselves, not cowering but clapping. and that shows that this didn't succeed. that shows that people are willing to get up and go about their daily lives. >> so the actions of the people in watertown, massachusetts, a lot of them in flip-flops, shorts, and t-shirts on a street corner, will actually, that expression, they'll hear you overseas. that will actually be seen and heard overseas. >> the point of all of this is to terrorize people. that is the point of terrorism. there's a perception in this mindset that americans are weak, that we're a consumer society, that we're spoiled, that we're soft, and that the little chink in the armor and the whole system starts to collapse. that's why you punish the people. they're the soft targets. and instead, when people come out and say we are not willing to be cowered. yes, we're the soft targets.

you can attack us. but we won't give in. that shows a kind of resolve that terrorists don't expect to find in a capitalist consumer country like this, like in boston. will that register with the militants? probably not. they're going to say we won. but it will register with some, that it didn't work. >> well, i'll say as the period at the end of the sentence, a lot of us did not like where this transported us back to. i know you chief among them, having spent the better part of a decade covering two wars. richard engel, thanks for your advice and counsel and your expert eye tonight. the mother of these two suspects said in an interview this evening she thought it was all an fbi setup. she said "nothing in my sons' computers has gone unseen by the fbi for years." the father, well, you'll hear from him in a moment. but people who knew both of these young men used words like kind, friendly, warm, and approachable. what a huge disconnect between those words and what these two

young men did. our report on these two suspects tonight from nbc's ann curry. >> reporter: in a telephone interview this evening, anzor tsarnaev, the father of the bombing suspects, denied his sons had anything to do with terror. >> translator: you could kill me, but i would never believe they had anything to do with this. >> how do you explain why authorities are saying that your two sons are suspected of terrorism? >> translator: this is nonsense. it doesn't add up. >> why would your sons be angry at america? why would your sons want to bomb and hurt people in america? >> translator: they would never, never, never do that in their lives. these boys were raised well. it's not physically possible they would be angry and bomb america. >> reporter: he also told us

that the fbi had been watching his family and had visited their home in cambridge five times, most recently a year and a half ago, looking for tamerlan. >> why was the fbi watching your family? >> translator: they said they were doing preventive work. they were afraid there might be some explosions on the streets of boston. >> reporter: he says he last spoke with the sons just after the marathon and they assured him they were okay. he brought his sons to cambridge from russia's war-torn caucasus more than ten years ago. tamerlan, 26, who was killed in a firefight early this morning, attended community college and wanted to become an engineer. an avid mixed martial artist, he told boston university magazine he wanted to become an american citizen and join the u.s. olympic boxing team. while he was a snappy dresser and drove a mercedes, tamerlan is quoted as saying "i don't have a single american friend. i don't understand them." his wife and 3-year-old daughter are seen here being escorted by

investigators today. her mother released a statement from her rhode island home. "in the aftermath of the patriots day horror we know we never knew tamerlan tsarnaev. our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted." meanwhile, tamerlan's brother dzhokhar, 19, was still on the run. he became a u.s. citizen last year, registered as a student at the university of massachusetts dartmouth. on his russian social media profile he says he is single, lists his priorities as career and money, and declares his worldview is islamic. >> it doesn't make sense. it just doesn't add up. >> reporter: rose shootsberg grew up with dzhokhar. >> tell me about your friendship. >> we met in high school. ninth grade. our friendship sort of developed over time, as most relationships do throughout high school. and it wasn't until sort of i would say the end of senior year where things really solidified because i started working as a

lifeguard with him at harvard university. we worked together. we did model u.n. together. >> you came to new york. >> we came to new york to do model u.n. >> you even had a crush on him. >> i even had a crush on him. whenever i was speaking to him i felt safe. >> interesting you use the word safe given the events -- >> i know. this is like something i'm so struggling with. i don't really understand how the dzhokhar i knew and the dzhokhar that's being publicized throughout the media, they don't match up at all for me. >> reporter: rose says dzhokhar was close to his older brother tamerlan but -- >> dzhokhar and his brother were very different people. and i think that maybe his experience here was slightly different than that of his brother's. he came here when he was younger.

so -- >> would you characterize him as an american kid? >> absolutely. yeah. definitely. he knew more like slang terms, cool words to use than i did. like there's no language barrier. he was what i might term like a typical cambridge boy. >> reporter: the suspect's father confirmed to us today that the elder brother spent six months in russia last year. he also had this message for police. >> translator: they killed one of my sons. i want at least the other son to live so that in the world court we can prove he's innocent if god allows. >> if you could speak to your son, what would you tell him? >> translator: that i love him and i can't live without him. >> ann thompson on those -- i'm sorry. i'm about to say we'll go to ann thompson in boston. ann curry on these two suspects in this case, one living in serious condition tonight, one

dead. now, as i was saying, when we come back from the break, we'll go to massachusetts bay state native ann thompson. what this has done to boston and what tonight feels like in boston.

we are back. we go, as advertised, to massachusetts native anne thompson in copley square tonight. anne, you know i grew up in a baseball and football broken home. dad from boston who eventually rooted for the mets while i grew up rooting for the yankees and new york football giants. but i've put all of that aside this week because boston is the priority. and around this time last night

it seemed like an insane world of hurt had been brought on that luckily very resilient city. >> reporter: it is an extraordinarily resilient city, brian. and you know, tonight the president said that boston refused to be intimidated and that is so true. it was a very strange day in this city. i can tell you. i mean, the lockdown turned boston into almost a state of martial law. in the public garden we saw the swan boats were just sitting there. they were floating in the lagoon. nobody was there. they've been a boston tradition for over 130 years. in the boston common there were more s.w.a.t. teams than people. usually, that's a place where workers and runners go by the

thousands. the freedom trail, which is the red brick line that takes tourists and school children to all the historic sites in this city, connected to the american revolution, no one was walking the freedom trail. it was a very unusual day. and yet, even though people were inconvenienced, even though they were told to stay in their homes, people i talked to, brian, as the lockdown went on, they all said one thing, they didn't want the suspect to be killed when he was captured. they wanted him to be taken alive because more than anything they want answers as to why those two men did what they did to the city of boston, to the boston marathon, and to this country because people don't understand how somebody could leave bombs in a crowd of people on the greatest day in this city and take lives and change lives forever. brian? >> and yet so oddly, anne, it is suddenly all lifted. it's all gone. one guy dead. one guy in the hospital.

it was just those two. we are all but convinced. and tomorrow may be a perfectly ordinary or spectacular day in boston. >> reporter: well, it is gone in this sense. i mean, yes, the red sox will play tomorrow at fenway park. they'll take on the kansas city royals. so that will be a way to get things back to normal. but i was struck listening to the governor and all the police officers after the suspect was captured. the first people they mentioned were the four people who died -- krystle campbell, martin richard, lingzi lu and sean colier, the officer who was killed. and that is first and foremost in the minds of the people here in boston. the loss of life and then those who are still in the hospital, the people who've lost limbs, who've suffered shrapnel injuries. yes, there is a great sense of relief that this at least the first phase of this is over. the suspects -- one has been captured, one has been killed. but they know that for the city there is a long road to recovery and this was just the first big

step. brian? >> what an obscene toll of human damage by these two men. anne thompson in the great city of boston tonight. anne, thanks. we also have an update tonight on the corcoran family whose terrible suffering after the bombing moved so many people around the world who heard their story. the mother had both legs amputated, and the frantic effort to help her daughter became one of the sadly enduring images of this tragedy. tonight their family is speaking to natalie morales for the first time. >> talking about here where it is a very tense situation in watertown -- >> reporter: as the nation watched the events unfold over the last 24 hours, kevin corcoran watched, too. at boston medical center. the hospital was on lockdown for much of the day. but kevin's been here since monday, ever since his wife, celeste, and their 17-year-old

daughter, sidney, were seriously injured at the marathon. their son tyler decided to stay home at the last minute. but the rest of the family was here at the finish line, waiting for celeste's sister, carmen acabo, to cross. >> i had been turning around to look at friends to my left and behind me about 10 or 15 feet. they were holding up signs. we'd say things to each other, do you see her or what have you. >> i couldn't wait to see if everyone was so crazy at mile 22 and mile 19 what's it going to be like when i run down boils-ton. >> it happened just as she neared mile 26. >> so when the bomb went off and it hit you, what was happening around you, what did you first notice? what went through your mind? >> i have a vivid memory of seeing my daughter and my friends being blown back, falling backwards, my daughter's

arms outstretched like this and just falling, falling backwards. i think my wife took the brunt of the impact. when i turned back around, she was no longer there and nobody was standing up anymore in front of me. so for a couple of seconds i just looked left and right and then looked down and there she was. >> your wife. >> my wife, celeste. i saw her eyes were open and i still at this point, i don't realize that this is a bomb that exploded. i see her eyes open. i know she's alive. and then i start looking around. and there are limbs everywhere and blood. and i look down her body to see if she's okay. and i notice her legs. and that's when it hits you. this is obviously some type of terrorist-related event, whatever you want to call it. and that's when it got real. instinct just takes over. you take your belt off. you put a tourniquet on. dwroel a guy who happened to be running toward me. he gave me his belt.

i put on another one. and then i just laid down next to her and just told her i loved her and that everything would be okay, and i just kissed her face and just gently caressed her while people were trying to get to us. and i just stayed with her, laying down in this carnage, in the blood, just holding on to her until the professionals came over and took over. >> reporter: kevin thought his daughter sydney was okay. he didn't realize she had also been seriously wounded, shrapnel severing her femoral artery. these pictures of sidney lying on the ground are some of the most powerful images of that day. strangers hovering over her and comforting her. >> after i had realized that i could not look for my daughter, i just entrusted to humanity and that there had to be somebody out there that was taking care of her. >> reporter: one of those people was matt smith. he helped stop the bleeding. >> he kept her calm.

>> he kept her calm. >> reporter: meanwhile, at the finish line carmen was looking for her family amid the chaos. you were just right there near the finish line. your own family, too. your husband, your kids, your three kids were there too. >> they were at the finish waiting for me. and i was terrified that my family was all gone. everyone that i loved was there. >> reporter: carmen finally found them and then rushed to the hospital to be with her sister, celeste, and kevin. celeste's injuries were so severe doctors had to amputate both her legs below the knees. an hour after the bombing, the family discovered sydney was being treated in the same hospital. but it wasn't until kevin spoke to her doctor that he realized how seriously sidney was injured. >> so i asked him in no uncertain terms because i needed to know just myself, what's your opinion? how bad was this? and he said this was a mortal wound and if the people did not

get to her when they did she would have bled to death. >> those people saved her life. >> i'll never forget those words. >> reporter: matt, who helped save sydney's life, visited her in the hospital. >> i spoke with him first and thanked him. we both cried together. and he's a very gentle, kind, nice person. and i'm thankful that he was there that day. >> and i know that your wife and your daughter now are recovering together in the same room. >> they are. they were very accommodating, the hospital, which has been doing a fantastic job. put them together in what i believe is one of the larger rooms on the floor so they could be side to side. they have a bond. >> they have the best relationship. they are like joined at the hip. they are like the mother and daughter that anyone who has a daughter wants to emulate. >> reporter: both celeste and sidney underwent further surgery today. but the family says their spirits are strong.